


Fix You

by BirdOfHermes



Category: Sleepy Hollow (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fix-It, Hospitals, Hurt/Comfort, Season 3 Finale, Season/Series 03 Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-19
Updated: 2016-04-19
Packaged: 2018-06-03 04:42:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6597130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BirdOfHermes/pseuds/BirdOfHermes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How the season three finale SHOULD have ended.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fix You

**Author's Note:**

> FUCK the season three finale. I do not consider it canon and I never will. Here's my take on how things ended with taking out Pandora and the Hidden One, and the ending that Team Witness actually deserved.

“Abbie, no!”

It’s all she hears as she walks towards the glowing box with her death written in its script. She makes it about three steps away before Crane’s condor arms envelop her waist and snatch her off her feet. She struggles against his lean frame, surprised to find that he’d tightened them around her like a boa constrictor’s coils.

“Crane, let me go!” she orders. “I have to! I don’t have a choice!”

“No, Leftenant,” Crane says, digging those long fingers in as if he intends to set down roots to keep her put. “It doesn’t have to end this way. Remember what you taught me? There is always another way.”

She squeezes her eyes shut as his words dig into the cold pit of her stomach and sting. “Not this time. We have to stop him. It’s me or the world, Crane.”

“No,” he murmurs, and then turns her around. He leans down to her height, clutching her arms, smiling sadly. “It’s us or the world.”

Her breath catches as she realize what he means. “Crane, please. I can’t let you do this.”

“Neither can I. And so we will do it together. We are the Witnesses. Quoth the lady, ‘What you do, I do.’ There is no world without you in it, Abbie. If we must face the Grim Reaper, we shall do it as God intended it.”

He slides his hand down her bicep, her elbow, to hers. His are cold and clammy and shaking the slightest bit, but his smile is steady. She swallows hard, tears burning in her eyes, then nods slowly.

“Together.”

They walk towards Pandora’s Box and set one hand upon the lid each. The light explodes and then they are gone. The last thing she feels is his fingers squeezing hers.

-

She wakes up in a hospital bed.

She hears the monotonous beep of the machine, the drip of the IV, and the faint murmur of doctors and patients in the hallway. Her eyelids weigh a ton, but she pries them open to stare at the ceiling. A second later, she feels thin fingers grip her wrist and then Jenny hovers into view.

“Hey,” she says, her brown eyes shining with tears. “Hey, Abbie. Thank God you’re finally awake.”

She leans in for a hug, kissing her sister’s forehead. “Thought I’d lost you again.”

Abbie smiles faintly, her voice hoarse. “Never.”

She breathes deep and pushes herself upright, her gaze flicking around the room until it settles on Crane. He’s in a bed identical to hers and he’s so pale he almost looks ghostly.

“Has he been awake?”

Jenny shakes her head. “How long have we been out?”

“A day.”

Abbie narrows her eyes slightly as everything starts to trickle back into her memory. “Pandora?”

“That’s the good news,” Jenny says with a fierce smile. “The box ate them both after it took you. It just…absorbed them. No sign of them anywhere.”

“How’s Joe?”

“Still got a big hole in his chest, but he’s recovering. Won’t be out of bed for a week, but they said he should make a full recovery.”

Abbie runs her fingers across Jenny’s knuckles. “What about you? Are you—”

Jenny shakes her head curtly. “Not right now. Too much going on. I’ll deal with it later.”

The door opens and a Middle Eastern woman appears, smiling faintly. “Agent Mills, it’s good to have you with us. How do you feel?”

“I’m fine. Can you check on Crane?”

The doctor winces, and Abbie’s too used to watching people to let it slide. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

“Agent Mills, I’m afraid I have some disheartening news about Mr. Crane’s condition. It’s…far more severe than we predicted.”

“Severe?”

“We haven’t been getting much brain activity. He is breathing on his own, but he hasn’t responded to any stimulation. We’re worried that he’s becoming comatose and we haven’t yet figured out why.”

Abbie licks her lips. She can’t feel anything. Just a numbness inside her. “Crane is in a coma?”

“Very near it, yes.”

Abbie shook her head. “No. That can’t be right. We were together when it happened. There’s no way. He’s just as strong as I am.”

“Agent Mills—”

“Stop talking to me and _go help him_ ,” she snarls. “Now. I don’t care what it takes.”

“Abbie,” Jenny says, her voice hushed. “Calm down. It’s only been a day. Maybe he just needs a little longer, that’s all.”

She’s breathing so hard it hurts her lungs. She closes her eyes and tries to stop it, but that thought bounces around in her skull. Coma. He’s in a coma. He’s never coming back. He’s never going to smile at you again. He’s gone.

“You’re right,” she mumbles, settling into her mound of pillows. “Sorry, doctor. It’s a lot to take in. Please just look him over and make sure he’s okay.”

“Yes, Agent Mills.”

-

She gets her strength back by the next day. No long term damage, the doctor says, not that she can tell. She just needs to stay off her feet for another few days, and she can return to work after that.

Crane doesn’t wake.

The doctor had chastised her several times about getting out of bed to sit by his side, but she ignored her. His hand is cold. Why is it so cold? It bothers her as much as the empty look on his face. Crane is and always has been such an expressive person, in anger, in sadness, in joy, in anything. The blankness of his pale skin sends chills through her. He looks so small and helpless here, not like the boisterous, sometimes arrogant partner she’s come to know after three years.

She brings his hand up to her lips, hoping her warmth will pour back into him at the simple touch. “Come on, Crane. I’ve brought you back from worse than this. Besides, it was your idea to go together. You can’t quit on me now. Not after all we’ve been through.”

She tucks a stray lock of hair behind his ear. “You need to get up. Help me figure out whatever other baddies are out there so we can stomp them out. The Hidden One may be gone, but nature abhors a vacuum. That’s something you’d say, right?”

She laughs weakly and strokes his wrist, listening to the slow rhythm of his breath. In. Out. He’ll come back to her. She knows he will.

-

Three agonizing days pass.

She can tell the doctor has moved on mentally. She spends so little time with the two of them, telling Abbie that there is nothing they can do but wait for him. She tries to bring up making arrangements, but Abbie won’t hear a word of it and sends her away, her anger breathing through the room like fire. She had been sad the first day, determined the second day, and now she’s just furious.

“I should have just listened to my instincts,” she says, shaking her head as she paces the length of his bed. “You had to intervene, didn’t you, Crane? Now look at us. You’re still in this bed and I’m going out of my mind trying to understand why. Why you? Why did it take more out of you than me? Why didn’t you just let me do it, Crane? It would have been better that way. I already cheated death. Maybe I owed it this one. Not you. We were supposed to be in this together, and now what are we? You’re supposed to be here, Crane. Why aren’t you _here?_ ”

She storms out of the hospital room and out the stairwell door to the rooftop, the cool wind drying the tracks of tears on her cheeks.

-

She spends three more days in the Archives, combing through every relevant text she can find, convinced that he’s been cast out of his body once more as an astral projection. She’s jumpy and twitchy and she’s had too much coffee so she can stay awake to read more. What little sleep she gets is when she curls up on the love seat underneath the blanket she’d tucked him in after he caught a cold. She can’t go home. It’s not home when he’s not there. It’s just a house with a swing.

Jenny helps where she can, offering suggestions and using process of elimination to tell what could be afflicting Crane, but she can only devote so much time while Joe is recuperating. Abbie spends long stretches of time with her father, and she can feel in the back of her mind that he also thinks Crane is gone for good, but he keeps up the façade for her sake. She doesn’t care if he believes. She still does. She always believes in Crane, as he has always believed in her.

Daniel tries to talk to her a few times, but she shuts him out. She can’t handle sympathy right now, not when she needs answers. He tells her to take all the time she needs, and not to worry about where they stand. He cryptically tells her that he knows where that is and he’s known all along deep down, and she doesn’t watch him leave when he goes.

-

Seven days since Pandora and the Hidden One disappeared.

Seven days without his smile.

Seven days without his laugh.

Seven days without his useless anecdotes about Betsy Ross.

Seven days without his stuffy opinions about selfies, the political system, tax reform, and reality TV.

Seven days without waking up to him singing Italian opera in the kitchen while he makes scones and tea.

Seven days without hearing ‘Leftenant’ or ‘Abbie’ in that tone only he can say it.

Seven days without that infamous smirk, the one he throws her way when they’re fighting evil and they might die but he’s fearless when she’s next to him because they make each other better, like partners are supposed to do.

Seven days without Crane.

If she has to go seven more, she’ll lose her mind.

-

“How?” she whispers, her head heavy as it leans on her arms, her face pressed to the thin cotton sheets wrapped around him. “How did you go a whole month without going crazy? It’s been a week and I’m cracking up like ice on a pond.”

“I’ve tried everything. Every spell. Every incantation. Everything I can think of. Where are you, Crane? You can’t be gone. I would have felt it. I know I would have.”

Her eyes are hot and wet. She doesn’t remember when she started crying, just that it’s tumbled out and she can’t stop it because she’s been strong for too long. She feels like crying is a childish need, a show of desperation, and she can’t bear to think that he is beyond all hope. Maybe he is. Maybe this is what she’s feared all along. Goodbye.

“Don’t go,” she whispers, pressing her forehead against the back of his hand. “Please don’t go, Crane. I love you.”

Silence. She briefly wonders if she can feel the world crumbling at its corners and tumbling down into the darkness.

Then she hears a tired voice croak and break that earth shattering quiet.

“Leftenant.”

-

He’s lucid in several hours, coherent in another few, and strong enough to sit up and eat shortly after that. The doctor is gobsmacked. She fumbles for her charts and writes nearly a whole paragraph down after analyzing Crane’s stunning full recovery. They keep him one more day just to be safe, but Crane is alive and well and walking down the hallway with Abbie’s hand in his as they head home.

As soon as they arrive, he suggests a feast, but Abbie shoves him into the loveseat and insists that he not lift a finger.

“Leftenant, it is most improper for a gentleman to sit by idly whilst the lady of the house prepares a meal,” he protests.

“This is your welcome home dinner, Crane,” she says tartly, one hand on her hip, her sleeves already rolled up. “You spoiled me for almost a month when I came back. Let me return the favor.”

“But—”

“Uh-uh. Sit. Don’t move until I call you to eat. Deal?”

She lifts a hand to her ear mockingly. He sighs. “Very well. I shall partake in some extracurricular activities to keep my mind off this affront to my manners.”

“You do that.”

Abbie hasn’t cooked a full dinner menu in ages, but it’s surprisingly simple to sink back into the recipes she’s known for years. Jenny and Joe had very kindly dropped off the groceries and would return shortly with the marshmallows they’d forgotten to buy. Baked chicken with homemade gravy, roasted asparagus, dinner rolls, garlic mashed potatoes, and sweet potato soufflé served with red wine are on tonight’s menu. It takes a few hours, but the time flies as she listens to Crane shouting British obscenities at random Internet video gamers and laughs quietly to herself every time he uses the word “pwn” like he’s a high schooler.

Dinner is glorious. Jenny and Joe fill Crane in on the hijinks they’d gotten into while he was away and stay late, nearly until midnight. They clean up the kitchen and then leave Crane and Abbie at the table, both drinking too much wine because it’s an excuse to be alone together.

“Leftenant, I am humbled by your unmatched skills in the kitchen,” Crane smiles over the rim of his glass. “Thank you for the feast. It was every bit as delectable as I could have imagined.”

“You’re welcome, Crane. And don’t expect me to ever do it again. And you’re cleaning up that mess yourself. Don’t even flash me those puppy dog eyes.”

He shrugs. “I concede it’s only fair. Yet another a mountain I must climb for my partner.”

They smile at each other. After a moment, he holds out his hand, his palm up, slowly, as if he’d been worried it would be inappropriate. Abbie’s fingers find his almost immediately.

“Thank you, Abbie,” he says in a hushed tone. “I am most sorry what you had to endure while I was away. If it had been my choice, I would have come straight back to you in a heartbeat.”

“Couldn’t be helped,” she replies. “You found your way home. That’s all that matters.”

“Abbie, if I may…” He hesitates.

“What?”

He shuts his eyes for a second. “There are…words I have been meaning to say, but at every available opportunity there has been a reason not to say them. Fear. Regret. Uncertainty. I have nothing but the utmost respect for you and so I feared it would be out of line for me to say them were they to put you in a position of discomfort. I suppose I’ve always known deep down that I wanted to say them for so long, but what we faced in the Hidden One’s lair made me realize that I have been arrogant in assuming I would always get another chance to say them. And so, to that end, I—”

He doesn’t get to finish. She kisses him first.

It’s electric. It’s fireworks and gasoline. It’s honey and cayenne pepper. It’s sweet and savory and bone-melting perfection.

She holds his hand throughout the duration of the kiss, as if to assure him that this is what she wants and that she’s here for whatever he will do in response. The first kiss lasts a millennia. She doesn’t want to move away, but she has to be sure it’s what he wants too.

She opens her eyes to see Crane staring at her like she’s the eighth wonder of the world, mixed with chocolate and crack cocaine. She doesn’t doubt any longer. It’s exactly what he wants.

“Abbie,” he murmurs, resting his forehead against hers. “I love you.”

She smiles faintly. “I know.”

She tugs him to his feet, her smile wicked in the candlelight. “Now prove it.”

He does. Three times that night. Once again in the morning.

And when she wakes in his arms, she knows that the house is a home once again.

FIN

_Lights will guide you home_  
_And ignite your bones_  
_And I will try to fix you._


End file.
